


The Prophet's Hair

by anniesburg



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Currently a one shot but we'll see, Demon/God relationships, Description heavy because dialogue is a challenge, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 12:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniesburg/pseuds/anniesburg
Summary: A very brief snapshot into the life of a demon-sentinel who needs food to survive and the god-in-hiding who brings it to him.





	The Prophet's Hair

**Author's Note:**

> i'm late to this train but i might have a crush on mr. font demon. he's cute so i gave him a gf, hope you enjoy xoxo.

Most of all, you miss midwinter. Cold still has a way of pressing against stone walls this high up Jade Mountain, but it isn’t the same as snow-capped hills and sparkling ice. There is, however, the occasional storm. 

It feels wrong to enjoy something that comes from the sky, but you tilt your head towards it when the water comes. It flows over your closed eyes and your nose, over your lips. The city is dark wood and filth, but you feel clean under the rain. You shiver, how good it is to shiver. 

There is nothing sublime to shiver at any more, the gods are gone. Dressing up demons will only serve as a small and undignified reminder of once-greatness, they can have your fear but not your awe. 

Guards shuffle past you, kneeling in the street and worshipping this rare gift. You do it in your own way, you let yourself smile as the chill sets in. Any longer out here and you’ll freeze, part of you likes how close that word comes to free. 

One day you’ll sit out in the rain until it drips from the end of your hair and washes away all your skin. Until you’re nothing but the water. Today you stand up before the storm has passed overhead and you count the beats between thunder and lightning strike. 

Soaked through and cold to your bones, you ignore the side-stares of shopkeepers and dependable thieves as you rush back towards the palace. They’ll return to their business eventually, unwilling to wonder beyond a passing fancy why you behave in such a way. 

Only one doesn’t look at you, he sweeps through the gates on a cloud of fog and forked lightning. His eyes are as pale as his face and they do not waver from the castle gates. You’ve taken to avoiding his long line of sight. 

He’s come back, it’s been such a long time. There’s a familiar sense of dread in your chest, mingled with excitement as you take a route into the castle more befitting of your station. Knocking twice on a panel-door grants you entrance into the heart of your intending destination: the kitchens. 

The oppressive heat of the coal ovens and roasting spits chases away what good the rain did for you. Sweat jumps to your brow in an instant and you let out a long sigh. The gruff head cook has a shiny, red face and a foul temper. All he has to do is point at the basket of potatoes for you to understand what he means. Securing your apron around your waist, you sit, already boiling from the inside and get to work.

Peeling turns to chopping turns to stewing, your apron streaked with blood from the animal carcass set down in front of you once your finished with the potatoes. The work never ends, how much do gods need to eat? Part of you already knows the answer, very little of what you make will see the inside of a god. 

You bring your cleaver down in long strokes, cubing beef and tossing it into the stew pot. It’s the best way to conserve resources with another banquet on the horizon. Every so often, you turn to the open window and watch the rain land in small puddles on the sill. 

Even at the distance, you can still feel it clinging to your eyelashes like frigid tears. You miss it, but you accept it and look away instead of crying out when cook slams the screen shut. 

You’re free after another six hours of hard work, but to an outsider it may not seem as such. Instead of slaving over a bucket of dirty dishes and soap suds, you’re given a long tray of identical bowls of stew. A small army of spoons clatters near the edge. 

The instructions are unspoken but understood, you know the way to the scribe rooms by heart. It’s a depressing atmosphere, the best of the broken gods still translating at a turtle’s pace. The true wonder of their powers lies in the fact that their bodies haven’t atrophied from half a millennia of inactivity. They move so slowly, if at all and you’ve become used to simply setting down the bowls of stew atop their papers. 

You care if they eat, of course you do, but there isn’t much to be done for them if they refuse. Most of them pick up their utensils with the same, languid motion used for writing. That’ll have to be good enough. 

It’s better to be in and out, staying here makes you feel worlds worse than the kitchens. The walls seem to contract, the sound of brushes on paper makes you wonder what you would be doing if you knew the language to translate the scroll. If you weren’t as adept at hiding. Surely, you understand, you wouldn’t work in the kitchens. 

With the tray at your side, you return from whence you came. Cook’s wrapped up in more time-consuming preparations, he neither notices nor cares when you sneak an extra bowl from the clean dish rack and fill it with the last of what’s in the pot. 

Finally, you’re allowed to remove your bloody apron, tossing it over a chair and making for the door with your stolen contraband. 

“I’m going to eat,” you tell him. He grunts and you’re thankful he doesn’t remember you said the same thing before the rain. You didn’t mean it either time. Instead, you creep off in the direction of the dungeon. 

Nobody sets foot here and so nobody locks the door. It doesn’t matter how many times you come down here, evidently it will always scare you. The metal hinges creak as you push your way inside, tugging the heavy oak door closed behind you. It still looks like prison in here, dark and noiseless. 

Sounds of breathing do not interrupt the pin-drop silence, you want to shudder at the near-quiet that surrounds you. Upright bodies stand in the shadows, heads bowed and eyes closed. You narrowly avoid bumping into the sentinels standing on either side of the forward-thrust stone as you set the stew on the floor and proceed. 

The cauldron on the table in the centre of the room burns orange fire. It never stops burning, lit by magic and incredibly sensitive to the orders put inside it. Momentarily you ignore the light and the heat, turning right to face the demon with the pale eyes. 

Of course, you only know that from memory. He seems to be in stasis, just like the others, it doesn’t feel right to call this sleep. A primal urge in you demands to sink something sharp into his abdomen, it demands you be careful around him. Instead, you trace the harsh line of his cheekbone with the pad of your index finger. 

Your hand strays over the characters on his jawline, his chin. You’ve asked him about them, once or twice and he glared hard as ice. Binding spells, that was all he said. 

With the impulsiveness of a human, you lean in and kiss him very gently. Your eyes flutter shut, hoping that just this once it will be enough to wake the prince. 

It never is, you have to use the spell. You smile to yourself as you walk over to the cauldron. He isn’t a prince, in fairness, of course it didn’t work. 

The means to undo the stasis sits beside the cauldron in the form of ink and paper. You dip the frayed brush into the ink, copying first the vertical line of three characters on his forehead before following them with wake up. Before you burn the little piece of paper, you hastily add please. 

Ash from the paper rises in the heat of the flame, awaiting the second half of the spell. From your pocket you take a short knife, pilfered from the kitchen and all you have to your name in terms of incognito protection. Pulling your hair over your shoulder, you cut two locks the length of an inches from the end and toss one into the fire. 

That does the trick, the fire sparks white and wild. You look and the demon’s eyes are open, lamp-like in the dark and staring right at you. That same, primal urge calls to you again and begs you to scribble something more influential onto the piece of paper. It begs you to make some sort of difference in this moment, what you have planned isn’t enough. Another, more reasonable part of you understands that there is no chance of doing so without being found out. 

Only Davari can get away with the large-scale orders, the go-here and kill-them sort. Anything bigger than what you’ve already done runs the risk of being found out. So you swallow your want to seize the means of control and on the second piece of paper you write eat, please. Wrapping it in the last lock of your hair, you cast it into the flames. 

He was awake before, watching you perform the second half of the spell with minute movements of his eyes. But it’s like magic the way he is allowed to move when the two halves are complete. He doesn’t surge away from his wall, but his still posture relaxes a fraction and he steps forward.

“I do not need to eat,” he begins, but he’s already walking towards the bowl. He sits heavily on the ground and you follow. 

“I missed you, too. And I know, you’ve told me,” you reply, sitting across from him on your knees. “but you can so you should. Otherwise you’d just be a glorified piece of paper. Something to write messages on.” 

He shoots you a glare and picks up the spoon, eating without another word. 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” you ask. He exhales in annoyance. 

“No, I have never seen a piece of paper that could lift a sword.” you smile despite yourself. 

“Or summon lightning. My analogy was mostly incorrect, you’re much more impressive than paper. Forgive me?” your smile turns impish and the slight shift in his expression tells you that he has. 

You let him eat in silence after that, watching the other sentinels barely exist around you. They’re like him when they’re immobile, little more than furniture. Maybe all of them deserve stew, goodness knows Davari doesn’t feed them, but you’ve developed something of a bias. 

He doesn’t seem put-out by the presence of the silent crowd. The fire crackles to your left and is reflected in his glassy eyes. He’s as quiet as he was before you woke him, looking at you with that same icy glare from earlier today. 

“I saw you come back this afternoon,” you strike up another conversation. He nods. 

“Yes, you were avoiding my line of sight.” he says, it’s unknown if he intends to make you laugh but a cautious giggle leaves you all the same. 

“You cut a very intimidating figure,” you say. “where did you go?” it occurs to you that he’s lying when he says he doesn’t need to eat. He finishes the stew a little too quickly for a demon with no appetite. Setting the bowl down with a soft clatter, he debates telling you. 

“A town some ways away, Palawa. It might take a human a week to walk there.” you lean forward a little bit, anticipating something of a story. He doesn’t make you ask why Palawa, of all places. “Davari wanted me to find a crown and kill a monk.” 

Your eyes widen, but it would be rude to interrupt. Despite your clear show of interest, the demon doesn’t elaborate further for a moment. 

“It was easy enough, initially,” he starts. “but ultimately, I was unsuccessful. Davari called me back from the darkness.” you gasp, the loudest noise you’ve made so far and his wandering eyes find yours again. 

“You died?” a slow nod and your stomach sinks. “How did he call you?” the demon looks towards the flames licking at the lip of the cauldron.

“The same way he makes all demands. These are for binding,” he motions to the words on his jaw. He then runs his middle finger over the ones on his forehead. “these, for summoning.” 

“I’m sorry,” you tell him. You don’t know what else to say to someone back from the dead again. “but I am glad that you’re back.” you imagine he is as well, but he doesn’t say it. 

The interaction shifts into the second phase, relying on an understood pattern that’s in mutual agreement. Careful not to send the bowl clattering, you shift closer to the demon with the long, off-white hair. He flinches like it’s a natural response, accustomed to stiffness and only getting close enough to someone else to kill them. 

“Speaking of what’s written on you,” you start, reaching out slowly and brushing his hair away from his face. “anything new?” 

He seems to understand your fixation, and lifts right hand in response. He undoes the button at his wrist, pulling it down and showing you the burned-in words over his blue veins. It’s a brief business contract, a figure for an exchange. Such a little, impermanent thing that’s made a home in his skin. 

“Oh, goodness,” you whisper. You find yourself reaching, too preoccupied to notice the rare event of him letting you do so. “will it stay? Sometimes they don’t.” the demon tilts his head minutely to the side as your fingers circle his wrist. 

“That remains to be seen,” he says. “it may.” his eyes leave your nail slowly tracing the fire-coloured edge of the new words on him, like it’s uncomfortable for him to bear witness to acts of kindness. Instead, he fixes his cold gaze on you. It’s chilling as the winter you miss, you look up at him. 

“I hope it didn’t hurt,” you start. He ends this, extracting his arm from your grip and tugging his sleeve back down. The demon dislikes to be pitied, and his nature prevents him from considering compassion anything other than that. 

You lapse into silence, as he does. But it’s not wholly unenjoyable, it’s nice to be silent with him every once in a while. You don’t know if he likes being watched, but he’s never spoken against you for doing so. It’s been months since you saw him last, you retrace the lines of his face and the red-purple shadows under his eyes and the curve of his lower lip. 

Committing his face to memory should you never see him again is no easy feat, it’s during periods of quiet contemplation like this that you can store another piece of him away. How conscious he is of you doing this is similarly unknown, but you like to think he’s doing the same. He wouldn’t tell you even if he were, that’s a source of comfort. 

“I kissed you while you were sleeping,” you tell him, and the slight look of confusion on his face is directed at the last word. It takes a second before he realizes you meant while he was in stasis, he doesn’t connect that act with sleep the way you do. 

“You have my permission to,” he reminds you, you choose not to interpret it as him treating you like an idiot. “you needn’t tell me.” your shrug is casual. You shift into a sideways lean, supported by your outstretched arm. 

“I told you because I want to do it again,” maybe he’s unfamiliar with everything, bluntness and subtlety. You would’ve had to pick one eventually, you choose the former to strum up the conversation for perhaps the third time since waking him. “do you want another kiss?” 

The question is disarmingly nonchalant, posed like you asked if he wanted more to eat. He responds with the same indifference, a curt nod. Familiarization with his most painful parts is swiftly discouraged but you’re aware of how he feels about this. 

Who doesn’t love a kiss to make them feel like an autonomous being? Your lean away from him is short-lived, you push away from the stone beneath your palm. On your knees again, you tilt your head towards his. His eyes close, waiting like he’s asleep again. 

But, to your surprise, he meets you halfway. He acts of his own volition as much as you do, your lips brush his and your hands stay by yourself. Mindless grabbing is unappreciated on both ends. 

You’re not sure if the fact that he’s breathing unnerves or reassures you, but you feel his chest rise and fall against yours. You kiss him and find that your questions about whether he is or is not alive go unanswered, but are otherwise forgotten. 

The feeling of his breath on your cheek is in stark contrast to how stiff he is. He kisses you robotically and tenses when your hands finally come to rest on his shoulders. Time is something neither of you have, but you like to dream of having more of it with him one day. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? To free him and be free yourself. 

Shoving your thoughts purposefully to the side, you enjoy the otherwise chaste kiss as much as you can. But you’re aware, always aware of the movements of the guards outside. You have to be. One wayward eye cast in your direction and you’ll be thrown from the top of the castle to the pit, and Davari may not be so quick to call him back from the dark a second time. 

“We should stop,” you tell him when you pull away. His eyes stay closed for a moment longer, the demon either can’t or won’t admit out loud that he wants to continue but the way he leans in search of another kiss says everything. It’s heartbreaking to watch him return to the small, dark room. 

He’s always a bit mum after this as you’re the one to force to fantasy away. When you’re both certain of the future, you promise yourself you’ll see just how long he’d allow himself to be held. You’re not so cruel as to rip yourself from him immediately, you give him a hug that he doesn’t know what to do with. It’s similar to the way you touched his wrist in terms of alien acts, but he accepts it while it lasts. 

“Do you know if I’ll see you again soon?” he shakes his head, as you expected. After a moment of your cheek to his shoulder, you leave him. Your heart begins to beat very quickly, very suddenly as you scramble to recall every detail of him should this truly be the last time. “It’s time to go back to sleep,” you mumble as there isn’t much else to say. 

“It is not sleep,” he moves to correct you in a way that makes you want to smile instead of cry. Perhaps he saw your mad dash to remember him more clearly than you intended to let on. 

“I like to pretend it is, don’t you, love?” being addressed directly, even with a pet name doesn’t sit well with him. The demon stands instead of answering and walks toward his place. It’s back to the wall with him, back to the kitchens with you. 

Well, soon, anyway. You stand after him and try to make your steps appear less like they belong in a funeral march. Truthfully, you’re sad to see him go. You give him one, last kiss for the present, just above his cheekbone before turning to the fire. 

He’s already closed his eyes before you can write the command. The demon’s never seen who’s hair you burn, or where you hide it. Maybe he knows what you are and lets you care for him anyway, you’d like that very much. 

You cut another lock, just one this time. Sleep, love. is written on the slip of paper, wrapped around your hair and burned. He does.


End file.
